Last Friday, I had the chance to tool on down to Bonner Springs, Kansas and check out one of my favorite bands, the Flaming Lips.  Lo and behold, they brought along some other bands and tooled out of work just early enough to catch most of them.  Overall, the show was well worth about the 40 bucks I paid with 10 for parking.  It wasn’t all rainbow roses, though, so let’s go over who I saw.

I showed up right after the first band, Stardeath and the White Dwarfs got done so I got nothing on them.  They did make an appearance later but we’ll go over that soon enough.  So instead of talking about their tunes, let’s go over the venue.  Sandstone has changed a ton over the years.  Before it was that monstrosity that was the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater it was good ole Sandstone.  All through its past, the one issue that I had with the place was the seating up front and general admission field in the back.  They fixed that, thankfully, and now everyone can pile up front to enjoy the show.

Speaking of which, the first band I spied for the night were the White Rabbits.  To me, I head some poppy seeds of sound laying the ground work of the set.  My nose twinged as I listened to the band convert the seeds in rabbit pellets of rock.  I could sense the buildup throughout the set and the pay off was rather enjoyable.  Still, I couldn’t help but think of the Animal Collective but tuned to a more mainstream sound.  Not bad for the first band of the night.

Next up was Minus the Bear.  I cheated before the show and listened to the new album, Omni, streamed online. With that tasty knowledge I saddled up closer to the stage to check out these guys.  The Seattle band started out with some pop heavy keyboard knowledge and followed through with some pretty tasty math rock.  Hints of Everything, Everything dropped in and out and that made me smile.  I even dug the room they gave to the lead guitarist to wrangle out some riffs.

Dead Weather straddled the stage for the next round of musical bronco busting.  For those of you under a rock, including me (well maybe a foot), the Dead Weather is the side project for The White Stripes lead dude Jack White.  One would think Jack, or Jackie as he called himself, would wail again on the music stick but he spent most of his time behind the drums.  Some raven voiced vixen from the Kills handle much of the singing duties.  All I could think of when they played was that they sounded like a Deep Purple cover band.  Much of the crowd was impressed by their sound, but I unfortunately was not.

The Flaming Lips closed out the show.  My mind was blown.  I’ve never seen them live but I’ve heard of the legend that is their stage show.  It was all that and a bag of confetti.  They played a sample of their collection from their 20+ year existence while balancing it out with a couple of tunes from Embryonic.  They also played a couple of songs from the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon cover album that came out late last year (with some help from Stardeath and the White Dwarfs).  In between songs we were treated to some tasty visuals and well some long-winded jabbering from Wayne Cohen.

Aside from Wayne pontificating, the set was well worth it alone.  The added bonus of the other bands only made the experience that much more worth it.  Sandstone looks alot better now that they ripped up half of the seats.  If you get a chance to check out the Flaming Lips, go for it.  If anything the stage show and people watching will leave you with tasty memories.  I’m still cleaning out the confetti from my hair.